According to the Congressional Record, Reed said that the amendment “recognizes the longstanding role that libraries have played in helping new Americans learn English, American

civics, and integrate into our local communities. It ensures that they continue to have a voice in these critical efforts… This amendment expands on the recent partnership between U.S.  Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) and IMLS.” He also cited IMLS statistics which say that more than 55 percent of new Americans use a public library at least once a week.

The bill itself, the Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act, seeks to strike a balance between creating a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants and addressing concerns about border protection. It does so in part by tying the authority to confer new, more protected statuses on undocumented immigrants to the creation and implementation of stringent border controls. These include registered provisional immigrant (RPI) status, and the subsequent conversion of such registered provisional immigrants to lawful permanent resident status.

Among the criteria for RPI status are English language skills, which makes Reed’s amendment particularly relevant.

Originally introduced by Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY), the bill has seven co-sponsors—four Republicans, three Democrats—including two from the border state of Arizona. (That co-sponsors number may soon fall to six; Senator Marco Rubio [R-FL]  said he would withdraw his support for the bill if an amendment which would give equal protection to opposite-sex spouses were added.) In spite of its bipartisan support, GovTrack gives the bill as a whole only a 27 percent chance of being enacted.

Reed Backs Workforce Investment in Libraries Too

Senator Reed speaks about workforce investment at a Rhode Island library

Reed is a staunch supporter of libraries’ role in achieving civic goals. He also recently introduced, with Senator Thad Cochran (R-MS), the Workforce Investments through Local Libraries Act (WILL) Act, which would recognize public libraries as allowable “One-Stop” partners, add library representation on workforce investment boards, and authorize new demonstration and pilot projects to establish employment resources in public libraries.

Reed spoke about the need for WILL at an event at the Cranston Public Library’s Central branch on June 14, along with Rhode Island Department of Labor and Training (DLT) Director Charles J. Fogarty, Rhode Island Office of Library and Information Services (OLIS) Chief Library Officer Howard Boksenbaum, and Cranston Public Library Director Edward Garcia.

“The WILL Act strengthens the connection between our public libraries and the ‘One-Stop’ system to better serve job seekers with more targeted services,” said Reed. “The WILL Act would give library users better access to workforce activities and information related to training and employment opportunities, including resume development and job bank searches,” said Reed. “We need to maximize our resources and draw upon the strength of community assets like public libraries to ensure our workforce development efforts are effective and efficient.” According to the Institute of Museum and Library Services, 30 million Americans used a library computer to address their career and employment needs in 2009. Sadly, GovTrack gives WILL a zero percent chance of being enacted.

The question for educators: what types of instruction help students develop these skills? In an ideal world, it’s instruction that asks students to do something with information: the raison d’être of librarians.  So how do librarians insert themselves into the critical discussions taking place around these instructional shifts?

Professional development is a good place to start—in the best cases, across institutions. In 2011, the New York City Department of Education Office of Library Services formed a partnership with the City University of New York to do just that—to design a community of practice around the Common Core and the high-school-to-college transition.

Participants—teachers, college faculty, and librarians—began the work by identifying the challenges first-year college students face. These included different knowledge demands and task requirements (for example, secondary schools often require students’ reactions to texts as opposed to thinking about texts within the disciplines), the movement from assignments with built-in supports to independent work, and the increasing volume and complexity of readings. (An opportunity to express some of their frustrations allowed participants to build trust and, thereafter, to focus on instruction as the method to change student outcomes.)

A detailed agenda with clear goals kept everyone engaged and focused at each meeting. Five sessions were devoted to revising and aligning a high school curricular unit on Julia Alvarez’s How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents (Algonquin, 1991) to the CCSS and college demands. An instructor introduced the unit and received feedback using a set protocol. A summary, which included the findings and listed next steps, was shared by a documentarian for further learning and reflection.

The Common Core prepares students for college by having them discover and apply critical approaches to complex texts to other primary texts and writing assignments. Participants commented on how this unit, focused on a novel, presented many opportunities to integrate informational texts similar to those a college faculty member used in his class. The librarians provided literary analysis from databases such as Contemporary Literary Criticism and Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism (both Gale) to incorporate into the unit, which reflected the types of well-structured arguments students will analyze and write in a first-year college course.

Participants suggested various pedagogical methods for integrating text excerpts from the articles. In this case, the group decided to create its own graphic organizer to model the critical reading approaches they wanted students to incorporate, including space for text excerpts, directions for identifying the author’s main points, and unfamiliar vocabulary. A second organizer posed questions to facilitate textual analysis. During the final session, participants structured the order of the texts for the unit and discussed how to use the same graphic organizers to address the increased complexity of the texts.

The Common Core challenges teachers to look beyond the novel or a textbook as the primary instructional source in favor of collections of texts. Students must build strong content knowledge by reading complex texts and developing the critical thinking skills involved in evaluating arguments and evidence. Participants left the workshop knowing that they can turn to librarians for support in identifying materials for instruction and developing assessments.

The Common Core provides no easy answers or ready-made lesson plans because it focuses on the tough task of making students think. This collaborative model is effective because it outlines a process articulating how librarians contribute to this essential work—collaborating across institutions and disciplines to align curriculum and instruction to students’ sense of wonder and curiosity—and to good old-fashioned inquiry.

Leanne Ellis is a library coordinator for the New York City School Library System, NYC Department of Education, Office of Library Services. To submit an On Common Core opinion piece, please contact Rebecca T. Miller at rmiller@mediasourceinc.com